Category Archives: Search Engine Optimization

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Marketing is about perspective. The moment that lead generators forget about that, they risk pleasing only one segment of their prospect organization but earn the contempt/fear/distrust/bad vibes of the rest.

Obviously, that’s a recipe for a conflicted buyer decision followed by lots of friction and eventually the sort of customer dissatisfaction that you only get when you failed to get a complete buy-in.

What’s the most common way to make this mistake though? It’s assuming that big numbers and big buttons always impress.

Anyone who’s hoped to escape the popularity contests of highschool might be a little disappointed if they ever got a job in B2B marketing. The real challenge though isn’t just the fact that these contest are more intense from competing for high profile corporate attention. It’s also because all that intensity’s just been magnified as online technology throws itself in the mix with offline marketing.

It’s not really the fault of technology that more companies have increased integrating an online marketing approach (whether it’s just adding a page on Facebook or reformatting their email templates for mobile readers). It just sort of happened.

With an age of information comes the race to capitalize it and at the same time, share the benefits of doing so. Yet unfortunately, that’s not usually the picture people have about it these days. Instead, everything from the most harmless lead generation campaigns up to your average government survey is viewed as suspect. “Privacy is dead” cry so many advocates.

Yet because out of fear of offending any such advocates (whether they’re in the telemarketing lists or among blog subscribers), many companies undermine their lead generation efforts.

B2B marketers are all about generating interest for their own companies. But are prospects the only people who express such interest or does a marketer’s responsibility lie in more than just winning new clients? Other departments such as recruitment could also use a bit marketing support as well.

It’s well known that finding the right employees isn’t just about you sitting at a desk, waiting for people to just ask if you’re hiring. Job advertising is a staple for recruitment but are B2B marketers participating? Getting the right people to work for your company can be just as much vital to sales as potential sales leads.

There are many similarities between appealing to potential candidates and to potential clients:

You need the ads to attract away from competition. Some of the best candidates may already be well settled in their current job. There’s competition here just as much as there is when you’re suggesting a product to consider your business over a competitor’s product.

It needs enough information. Candidates want more detail when it comes to information about their soon-to-be-employer. Often times, this sounds like the recruiter’s job and not the marketers. Sadly, recruiters sometimes fail to include the right amount and only do it out typical fears that their job may be outsourced.

Innovative style – As with marketing in general, recruits are in need of innovating their own lines. “Why should we hire you?” or “What can you contribute to our company?” are a little too 1995. Recruiters need to formulate their content to match processes that are aligned with recent job seeking facts.

Today’s recruiters need more than the typical, technical ‘Looking for Person X with Y Skills.’ They need something that sparks the mind even among those who aren’t actively looking. They need material that is targeted. They need material that is relevant.

They need something that B2B marketers already have. So while winning potential clients may be your primary responsibility, don’t hesitate to help those who could the same skills and resources you’ve got.

Given that it’s hot. The days are longer. It shouldn’t be surprising when even prospects in the office are more prone to browsing things like marketing content at a slower pace.

Why then is your B2B marketing campaign not taking this chance to change? If stock market investors have their own business-related summer plans, then so should your marketers. Given all the free time it’s supposed to entail, it’s not that hard figuring out a content strategy that would fit the lazier state of mind it creates.

Plan this early – If summer is such a hard time for your B2B marketing department then treat like a storm: prepare before it gets there. Find ways to survive the slow sales. Plan for the fall campaign. Outsource it and go on vacation. No matter what, the point is you need to start making plans now.

Use brighter colors – What do you do when you start packing for the beach? What catches your eye more often? Is it the swimsuit sale? Getaway packages? In case you didn’t notice, plenty of them make use of bright colors that go with the sunny season. Your local mall shouldn’t be the only business that tries to leave an eye-catching impression.

Make it like ice-cream – Whether its ice cream or lemonade, the heat’s more bearable with something cool in your mouth. Same principle applies when the summer lazy haze starts giving prospects a headache. Maybe instead of the usual white paper, do something a little more refreshing like a funny story or a funny infographic.

Set matching appointments – Instead of the usual conference room, why not use sales appointments as an excuse to get both yourself and your prospects out of the office? Or if you’re hosting an event, why not set it someplace cozy like near a beach instead of the usual convention hall?

Unlike winter or Easter, summer’s arguably the season when even professionals and managers have a lot more free time. Make that the key to blending the themes of your marketing campaign with the season. Try making things a little more relaxed but when they’re in their relaxed state of mind, make it easier for yourself to turn them into your next client.

It’s said there are only a few ways for a poet to make money. Promoting one’s own work can be hard and harder still given the fickle nature of publishing companies.

But in B2B marketing, the field of content creation is beginning to raise its difficulty to that level. Providing quality content requires both creativity and relevance from writers. You don’t even need to apply actual poetry. It’s enough to know those two elements determine how efficient your content is at making promising leads out of a target audience.

Then again, you might think a poet’s price is exactly the number you need to measure the cost of creativity.

Shakespeare is a very iconic historical character due to his famous literary works that are still celebrated today. Known as one of the most greatest and influential poets in history, you can’t have National Poetry Month without hearing at least one mention of him.

William Shakespeare’s impact on language and communication extends from theatre and literature to present-day films and everyday conversation. Tag lines like “Fight fire with fire” (King John) and “a wild goose chase” (Romeo and Juliet) are attributed to him.

Yet despite the fame, is he a role model for content marketers everywhere? One would think so given that creativity plays a vital role in engaging content. However, the quality of Shakespearean work and that of good marketing can have varying standards:

Whether you know it or not, your business is already using content marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy. It’s arguably the most critical piece of any inbound marketing strategy.

But how exactly do you define it? Is it blogging? Is it PR? Will this even include the content of your telemarketing scripts or email templates?

Let’s start with a general definition. Content marketing is really about providing valuable information or creative content to current and potential customers for the purpose of:

Building trust

Brand awareness

Positive sentiment

A successful content marketing campaign presents you as one trusted expert in your field. In turn, this makes it easier to maintain a long-term business relationship by holding your focus on it instead of just winning your daily sales quota.

Strategies in this type of marketing analyze the different ways content is found across the buyer’s journey, the customer lifecycle, and other different customer experiences and touchpoints. It also looks for means of integrating it with other (bigger) marketing strategies.

But despite the many ones you’re likely to find, they have the three objectives in common. That way, no no matter how many different forms that marketing content takes, you can keep it consistent.

Knowing your Buyer’s Preferences – Buyer personas have an impact on content marketing just as any other. In fact, content marketing only makes them more dynamic. You will always want to know what kind of buyer would buy what kind of product. This leads to understanding the different kinds of people who prefer different kinds of content (and in different kinds of channels).

Using Goals to Define ‘Better Content’ – Are you trying to build traffic? Improve conversion? Many people don’t know just how much of their marketing is using the content you create. That’s why you should try aligning their goals along with yours.

Adapt to Industry Changes – When an industry changes, so do the buyers it caters too. Look at how B2B marketing itself has changed because of the new trends in content marketing. Thanks to birth of search engines and social media, they have again redefined content’s role. It’s the same when you learn of other changes in your industry and need to inform the target market about these changes.

You may not even need to immerse yourself completely to understand content’s vital role. You just need to recognize what that role is. Don’t worry about giving a bigger slice of your budget for an exclusive content marketing campaign. Content itself can just ties with your other marketing goals without too much of a demand on your investment.

A company’s logo is a fundamental part of every brand. It represents their identity and makes them instantly recognizable. Most corporations spend millions tinkering with their logos, trying to figure out what will stick in the minds of customers. When a customer views one, it triggers all sorts of thoughts and emotions making some of them unforgettable. Unfortunately for brands, those aren’t always positive.

Parodies change and poke fun of what the original brand represented (and not always with explicit permission). How they do it though can be just the kind of positive/negative feedback you need in your B2B marketing campaign.